His Basic started at For Leonard Wood, Missouri.
Many funny things took place during those Basic Days. We wore rubber overshoes over our combat boots most of the time. On one of the early days, as our Platoon leader was inspecting the troops, he looked at the feet of the soldier on my right, then stepped in front of me, then back to the soldier on my right. The young kid from Monterey, California, had the overshoes on the wrong feet making the angle of the feet look rather peculiar. We went on about a 15-mile march one day and the normal plan was to take a ten-minute break every hour. At our first break this same kid complained about his feet hurting. The sergeant had him take off his boots. It turned out that he was only wearing the overshoes with no boots. He had blisters on both top and bottom of his feet. He did get a ride back to the barracks however.
re; 23 ...a real man, someone my son can look up to. A class act for sure!
It's funny, but not.